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Proper Preparation, and a Magical Night

A. Muscaria (Formosia)

by Glen

Citation:   Glen. "Proper Preparation, and a Magical Night: An Experience with A. Muscaria (Formosia) (ID 55735)". Erowid.org. Feb 9, 2007. erowid.org/exp/55735

I could incorporate endless poetry into this report about my feelings, about beleifs of why these mushrooms exist at the time of year they do, and the spiritual healing that followed after swallowing the mushrooms, but I will force myself, as best as I can, to only include the important things that most would like to read about such a thing as an Amanita experience - as I am rather young in life, and have already loved deeply and lost unfairly and horribly, and though my lonleyness still effects me negativly, the Amanitas have been one of the many foods that have changed the way I percieve my life, AND life itself. Life can be either a struggle or a challenge, and this is completly up to ourselves. Drink or eat or inhale whatever if it helps you live the right way.

It was the first half of fall, before the first frost, so all the flowers in my garden where bushy, and some were overgrown in a pleasant sense. My largest brugmansia was still blooming in waves, though the cool, dry weather seemed to refrain any scent. It was the time of year that I live for. The birch trees were already dropping gold leaves, and some oaks and maples were begining to show signs of turning to the red and oranges of the spectrum. I was less knowledgable then, I thought the Amanitas only came up after the first frost, but the nice weather lured me into the woods for a few pleasant hours. I grabed a backpack and walked to the end of my dead end street, up the very wide, rocky trail, through the trails on a cliff of hemlocks next to a lake, and then down a long trail through the woods to the farm area.

The trail forked right to a bumpy road, I walked the left fork and saw the end of the trail, revealing the beautiful farm. Right before the end of this trail was another trail on the left, I walked this trail half a mile to an old rock wall marking the property line of the farm, though on the other side of the wall wasn't a meadow, but what I believe to be an intentionally planted pine forest, at least a few acres, serving as a natural fence for the open part of the farm. Although there are many large pines throughout this thicket, the fact that some of the smaller trunks have nearly a foot of space between them, mostly planted in straight lines, and averaging twenty something feet tall, causes me to have doubts that this was a natural thicket of white pine. Not to mention that halfway through the thicket I cross a rock and dirt bridge over a stream, with lichen moss on the rocks. This bridge is wide enough to accomodate a horse and buggy, and the remnants of old trails of the same width, grown in with small, dead pines, riddle the thicket floor (Im getting a warm fuzzy feeling just writing about it, and for those of you in disbelief that the woods of the New England area could harbor such a place, I swear that this place is indeed real). I followed the trail almost to the end of the thicket where you come out to one of the meadows, and entered a very small clearing, large enough for grass to be growing, with two rocks set in the ground as lay down seats, at the head of each rock was a eastern red cedar, one small and dead, the other about fifteen feet tall and very, very green.

I layed on the ground with my back against the rock under the living cedar and smoked a bowl of my burley tobacco. Though the pines were grown in, there was still a nice view above the clearing of the the clouds in the sky, and I dreamed awake for a few moments. Moments like this make life so worthwhile, though most people my age not only wouldnt care, but would think doing such a thing is stupid or gay. I got the inspiration to walk along the edge of the pine forest, where the Amanitas have come up in previous years, and in satisfactory numbers. Twenty feet southward from the clearing I see a huge one on the east side of a larger trunk, matured to a flatter shape. Ten feet further south of this spot I find a few more, younger and rounder. I was unsure to pick them or not because I had only eaten the scarlett or orange red ones, these ones were mostly yellow with some orange twards the peak. I made a better choice when I decided to pick them.

I got the large one, the flatter one, about six inches across, and two young ones about three or four inches each. Any other ones I saw were already more maggots than mushroom (although eating a few maggots doesnt have any possibility of doing harm).

I ate them at night. I started the fire after dark, in my backyard, and used a thin pine branch as a cooking fork, which gave a unique flavor to the caps. I cooked them close enough over the flames to make them swell and sweat, but not burn them. I decided each cap was ready when they took on a leathery, almost scaled look. The flavor is very mystical and excesive salivation is immediate. One might expect some cramps within five minutes after the first cap. I spend the first 2 hours sitting and day dreaming, or I walk around a bit to help digest the mushrooms quicker. I looked at the moon and thought, I walked in the starlit garden and admired the plants and forms, I tended the fire, I smoked my pipe and thought, I stared into the flames and thought. The begining of the third hour was when the magic began.

I became the mushroom in a abstract sense. I was very horny, and though alone, I wasnt even capable of percieving lonlyness. I looked at the moon. I gazed at the stars. I thought about my life, somehow, in the most postive way I could remember doing. At one point I turned on the outside light that lit up the gardens front wall, around the forth hour, and sat on the bench. When I thought a thought, I could hear it clearly in my head, repeated to me in a high pitched voice that came out faster. This made me laugh. Luckily the voice didnt repeat the laughter or I would have laughed harder, and where oh where would that ever end?

I reflected at the journey to the pine woods. I had drifting images in my head of peeking under the pine trees and spotting these magical Amanitas, and all this wisdom and knowledge of life and insight and everything grew in my mind like invasive vines. I was healed of many things that night and it never wears off. Its seems that since I benifit from the wisom in the mushroom, then I have this natural desire to come back to them every year and reflect upon life once again.

These mushroooms look the way they do for a reason, and that is to catch our attention because of the secrets they behold. They are large, round, plump,bulky, of beautiful colors, and of coarse, have the distintive white spots. I have found the bulb shaped base of them with the stalks bitten off like a deer ate them, and chunks with teeth marks in the caps like a sqirrel or chipmunk had a stomach full feast. It seems a natural desire to me and with good reason as well to partake of A MAN EAT A MUSCARIA.